


Augury Gang

by hes5thlazarus



Series: Lazarus' Harry Potter Daydreams [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:22:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26798770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus
Summary: Eileen's mother curses her, and she dies not too long after giving birth to Severus. Tobias, a millworker and a proud union man, does his best.
Relationships: Eileen Prince & Severus Snape, Eileen Prince/Tobias Snape, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape, Severus Snape & Tobias Snape
Series: Lazarus' Harry Potter Daydreams [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954336
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	1. The Augury Gang

And so, Severus Snape as an ambitious muggleborn, or muggleraised–perhaps Eileen dies from complications with childbirth (an eerie parallel to Voldemort), and Tobias is stuck raising the kid.  
  
And Tobias tries. He really tries. He loves the boy, his sharp mind and sharp eyes just like his mother’s, never backing down from a fight and often emerging victorious, with a cutting remark and cut lip. But there’s just something off about him.  
  
Like how Mrs. Callahan’s boys all erupted with boils after jumping him that time in the park. Or how, when he takes him with him to the pub, his cup always runs dry. Or how his hair rapidly grows back, no matter how often he cuts it. And believe me, Tobias tries to tame him. Doesn’t help all the freakishness scares the women away. So there’s no chance of a second Mrs. Snape.  
  
Now Toby wanted to finish school, and reads when he can, and he was able to withstand the kicking for being a swot pretty well, he’s a broad guy. But Sev’s not. He’s thin as a whip, and it doesn’t help he’s barely bringing in enough to feed himself, let alone his son. Sev wins those fights sometimes, he’s an excellent scraper, but it brings out a weird gleam in his eye and weirder things happening. So Toby goes and meets with his teachers and they all hastily agree to get him sent to the nicer school across the Cokeworth River, by the time the boy’s eight.  
  
And suddenly, the behavioral issues stop. Sure, the boy gets teased, but the neighborhood boys aren’t bothering him so much–and aren’t breaking out in rashes as often. Sev talks a little bit about a new friend–another sparkling fierce little kid like him, with the same strange gleam in her eyes. Lily Evans, who can make flowers dance and fly and school milk rot while her enemies drink it.  
  
But, now that they’ve got each other, they keep their freakishness to themselves. And when it’s time for McGonagall to come and introduce Hogwarts to their families, she brings Professor Sprout, to talk to the boy about his mother, who had been in her house.  
  
Toby’s taught Severus the value of hardwork but also the futility of it, on the picket line. Sev, who’s heard his father struggle with whether or not to scab to feed them another day, doesn’t buy the idea that hard work and loyalty will get him where he wants to be. Chivalry’s overrated, just a way to get into a girl’s pants, or so the older boys have taught him. Intelligence? Well, look at his dad–his dad’s brilliant, knows Latin and taught himself Greek from a discarded textbook, but he’s still an erstwhile factory hand. But cunning and ambition? That can take him places. And maybe Lily too.  
  
The Sorting Hat hesitates when sending him to Slytherin–look at that mess with Tom Riddle. But that hunger demanding explanation, acceptance, approval wins out, and Sev goes to Slytherin, unashamed of his father. He’s got a world to win. He knows the game, his dad taught him not to sneer when he calls himself a prole. At least he’s got a soul.  
  
And that’s how Severus Snape sparks a mini-revolution in Slytherin House and shouts at Dumbledore that he was capitalist swine after the Werewolf Incident. And ends up in Azkaban, hexing the police officer that socked his aging father in the face during a riot in the early 80s. But not for that long. And then the Order of the Phoenix has a radical rival–the Augury Gang, a group of muggleborn and muggleraised wizarding folk who believe in the global revolution, and are turned off by the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters’ elitism.  
  
Workers of the world, rise! You have nothing to lose but your chains!


	2. endings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eileen dies.

Tobias had noticed Eileen wasn’t doing well, after he lost the clerical job and had to move back to Cokeworth and work at the mill. She had thrived, living near the sea, and the pregnancy, which had them both glowing at first, seemed to sap the strength from her bones. It was difficult. In the fourth month, when it was clear it was going to hang on, he had quietly raised the possibility of an abortion–she couldn’t keep down food, it was like a cancer, eating her from the inside. But, furious, she had shouted it down, with religious fervor. Her family didn’t believe in murdering babies: okay, well, it wasn’t a baby yet, and if carrying it kills you– Then she began to cry, and Tobias, helplessly, patted her hand, and promised her it would be okay, he’d see how they can shift the budget, he wanted the baby, don’t worry, he’ll love it, okay?  
  
The local women–Mrs. Callahan, who was on her second; Deborah Jones, his cousin somehow, who was quietly raising a daughter by herself, the cheap wedding ring wasn’t fooling anyone, free loves run out when the lover does; and Mary Deare, the witchy lady, the local midwife–gathered around her, clucking over her as the months dragged on. Eileen seemed constantly exhausted, gray, ill, her hair straggly. Her belly seemed oddly distended, and as the baby grew they would both lie awake, watching it furiously protest its tomb.  
  
“Difficult pregnancy, easy baby,” Eileen singsonged as the gray dawn light curled in. Tobias rolled over the bed to regard her, her sweaty frame, so oddly thin. She then abruptly vomited off the side of bed, and began to cry. Tobias, rubbing her shoulders, wanted to die.  
  
Mary Deare came in to deliver the baby, and her aging husband stayed downstairs to keep Tobias occupied. Mrs. Callahan bustled in with hot towells and dragged Deborah and a passel of children, occupied on heating water. It was seriously freaking him out.

“Is she supposed to be so silent?” he demanded at one point. “Why is she so quiet? Isn’t it supposed to be painful?”  
  
Mr. Deare said simply, “Has your wife ever been a screamer?”  
  
No, more of quiet sighs and shining eyes, abrupt looks down and lips bitten, whispered prayers in a language he did not know. Tobias shut his eyes.  
  
The baby was born as the day turned into gray on Janus’ Day, snow softening the dire streets of Spinner’s End. He, in contrast, was loud and lively. Eileen, though weak, was smug. “Difficult pregnancy, easy baby,” she smirked, guiding him to her breast.  
  
Tobias was fascinated. “He looks like Winston Churchill. I always thought they were joking, when they said all babies look like Churchill. But he does. Look at him.”

Eileen, too tired to do more than shoot him an outraged glare, hummed at her baby.  
  
The women decided the baby had his father’s nose but his mother’s eyes and certainly her eyebrows, which lent him a funny hauteur, her lips too but that was Tobias’ chin. He slept soundly and woke up hungry. Tobias found himself enjoying holding him; he was like a cat, in how he’d curl into warmth. Better than a cat, in a few years he’d be talking, and then they’d see which one he really was like. He had Eileen’s smile, though, Tobias soon discovered, and that had him glowing.

They named him Severus, for the patron saint of weavers, for Tobias, his father, and grandfather; and Tobias added Alexander, for his favorite Roman emperor.  
  
Eileen did not seem to recover her former strength. Mrs. Deare visited daily, Mrs. Callahan dropped by three times a week, and Deborah started doing their washing for them, to help Tobias manage. She loved the baby, refused to have him separated from her, but seemed depressed. Tobias caught her crying in the night. She was getting letters on heavy paper, ink bleeding off of them, but didn’t seem to make her feel any better.

Tobias had a sense it was about her parents and didn’t really want to intrude, but he finally had to ask.

“Oh, my mother’s cursed me,” Eileen said sadly. “Something dark, something bloody. And my father’s been scouring the country for cursebreakers, but it seems blood will out.”

“Please don’t joke about things like that.”

That made her laugh. Tobias fretted. Eileen continued to drag herself along, barely managing the stairs, but the baby flourished. “It’s me or him, you see,” he overheard her telling Mary Deare. “And I won’t let them take him, it’s my choice, you see? I chose Tobias. They can take my luck away but they won’t take my love.”  
  
None of Mrs. Deare’s tinctures helped–and her little potions and poultices made Eileen smile, she said they weren’t quite the real magic thing–and the doctor didn’t either.  
  
She lasted until the day after May Day, 1960. Tobias barely paid any mind to the union’s plots and celebrations, and his mates’ worries about the American plane the USSR shot down. At least the local help pay for the funeral. Her parents didn’t come. The baby didn’t cry: difficult pregnancy, easy baby. Tobias kept him close and wondered: what the fuck am I going to do now.


	3. beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sev meets Lily.

“I saw you,” Lily said, cornering the Snape boy at the edge of the wire fencing. They’d been let out to play. Most of the kids were involved in a game of football, the girls cheering and jeering. He was a decent player, but he had twisted his ankle falling out of a tree yesterday, and the nurse said no.

The boy looked down, lank hair covering his face. “Dun’ know what you’re talkin’ about,” he muttered.

“I saw you,” Lily repeated. “Yesterday, after school. Going up the tree. You floated first. Only fell because I saw you.”

“You’re mental.”

“No, I’m not,” she said, a blast of desperation pushing her closer. The boy looked up, alarmed, tried to wiggle away. Lily drew back as if stung. Flexing her fingers, she repeated again, “I saw you. And I know I did. Because I can do it too.

He stared at her. “Prove it,” he said flatly.

She huffed, and, grabbing his arm, dragged him to where the concrete of the payground began to crack. She squatted next to a daisy. Snape stared down at her. She gestured at him, annoyed. “Come on! So nobody’d else see.” He crouched. Lily plucked the daisy and held it before his eyes. Fixedly, she began to singsong, “Here comes the sun, little darling, here comes…” and the petals began to wave in tune with her pitch. She grinned at him and let the flower go. It stayed suspended, between them. “See? I can do it too.”

“Magic,” Snape said rustily. “Yeah.” He snapped his fingers and the flower abruptly burst into flames. Agast, Lily threw herself backward. “Leave me alone.” He stood up and began to move away

“Oh no I won’t,” Lily growled, and tackles him to the ground.

The ensuing detention, for which Severus got most of the blame, solidified their friendship. Lily would never, indeed, leeave Severus alone–even when it was for their own good.


End file.
